In general, portable terminals refer to electronic devices that are personal portable devices and can provide a variety of services as well as wireless communication service, using application programs. Examples of the portable terminals are personal mobile communication services terminals, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), smart phones, International Mobile Telecommunication 2000 (IMT-2000) terminals, wireless Local Area Network (LAN) terminals, and the like.
With the rapid development of technology, portable terminals have been providing a variety of functions, such as a video call, an electronic organizer, a voice or video storing function, an Internet function, game device function, and so forth, as well as a voice call and an SMS message transmission. In addition to these functions, recently, they have included a digital camera function, so that they can capture still or moving images. The captured images can be used as a background image for the screen of the portable terminals and also can be transmitted to other portable terminals.
FIG. 1 illustrates a view of a conventional configuration of a phone number comprised of letters and numbers. As shown in FIG. 1, conventional phone numbers, such as a phone number for advertisement, may be configured by a combination of numbers and letters, so that people can easily memorize them. For example, if such conventional phone numbers are input in a portable terminal with a conventional 3×4 keypad shown in FIG. 2, corresponding keys are pressed on the 3×4 keypad, so that the portable terminal can send a call to the called party corresponding to the input phone number or store the phone number therein. Since letters contained in the conventional phone number previously are mapped to numbers, when they are pressed, the portable terminal recognizes numbers corresponding to the input letters.
More specifically, in order to send a call or store a phone number, such as for example, 1-800-4-BOOKIT, shown in FIG. 1, a user can successively press the alphanumeric keys, 1, 8, 0, 0, 4, 2, 6, 6, 5, 4, 8, on the conventional 3×4 keypad shown in FIG. 2.
Meanwhile, in a QWERTY keypad shown in FIG. 3, the alphanumeric keys are formed in such a way that numbers, ‘0’ to ‘9’, are mapped by part of the English alphabets, so that each alphanumeric key has one number and one letter. Therefore, if a conventional phone number comprised of a combination of numbers and letters is input to a portable terminal, through the conventional QWERTY keypad, a user must detect letters contained in the phone number, which do not form alphanumeric keys, refer to keys of the 3×4 keypad, corresponding to the detected letters, and then input keys in the QWERTY keypad, which correspond to the keys of the 3×4 keypad. This provides convenience for users when they use the portable terminal.